Review: El Kapitan from Wu Tang House of Mods

Wu Tang El Kapitan

Summary: Wu Tang's follow-up to the excellent Bagga, the El Kapitan features very strong performance with a cleaner look and none of the Bagga's cosmetic shortcomings.

4.1

Excellent

Your RatingUser Rating: 2.4(28 votes)

Wu Tang, of Wu Tang House of Mods, has made quite a name for himself in a very short time. When his Bagga mod was released, few people had heard of this modder from the Philippines, but that changed fast. The Bagga impressed quite a few people with its solid build quality and excellent performance — so when Wu Tang’s follow-up, the El Kapitan, was announced, it was an easy sell.

We recently received a pair of El Kapitans from a group buy hosted by Facebook’s Legit Group Buys. Why two? Because the mod is available in stainless steel and brass versions, and we’re suckers for two-toned mods. Also, as owners of a Special Edition Bagga mod which we love almost as much as our mothers, it wasn’t a purchase we thought we were likely to regret.

The Wu Tang El Kapitan is a bottom-fired mechanical mod from the Philippines. Anyone who’s owned more than one or two Pinoy mods is probably aware that buying mods from there, particularly from new modders, can be a real crap shoot. While there are some really good mods coming from the area, there are also some really, really bad ones. Having now bought two of Wu Tang’s mods, we’d place them firmly into the “really good” category. Wu Tang not only engineers his hardware well, he follows through all the way along the process until they are shipped, ensuring quality and tweaking designs along the way to make sure everything is up to his high standards.

El Kapitan in stainless steel with brass end caps

If the looks of the Bagga were its weak point, the El Kapitan definitely makes up for it. It is a much cleaner-looking mod than the Bagga, somewhat reminiscent (particularly when mixed for a two-toned look) of the Caravela. Deep spiral engraving encircles the mod, with a similarly deeply-engraved anchor logo engraved near the bottom. “El Kapitan” is engraved below the anchor in a very small, but clear, cursive font. On the button are engraved the Wu Tang House of Mods name and “WT” logo, along with a serial number (11, in our case, the same as our Bagga, a match for which we take a large, geeky amount of pleasure). Wu Tang has definitely learned a lesson here — the markings on the Wu Tang El Kapitan are about as permanent as markings could possibly be.

While we love how the El Kapitan looks on the outside, the inside holds up to inspection as well. The Wu Tang El Kapitan features brass contacts at both ends, with screw heads on both contacts to allow adjustments: the bottom screw adjusts switch throw, and the top can be used to change the depth of the positive pin to enable flush mounting of an atomizer. The mod also has small venting holes in the bottom, concealed beneath the button where they are not visible. This enhances the already very clean look of the mod.

We’ve found very few things to complain about with the Wu Tang El Kapitan. While we did note that the battery rattles around inside the mod somewhat when the mod is moved, we haven’t found it to affect the mod’s performance, which we found to be excellent. We measured voltage retention of approximately 95 to 96%, or voltage drop of .13 to .23 volts on a fully-charged battery, with slightly better performance with the brass tube compared to the stainless steel one.

We also noticed a small amount of roughness with the bottom threads: when swapping the bottom caps, it took a bit of force to get the brass bottom screwed onto the stainless 18650 tube, but as you can tell from our photos, we did manage to make it work.

The El Kapitan’s button

Our El Kapitans cost us about $150 apiece, a pretty typical price for a well-made Pinoy mod. It may not be easy finding one at that price now, though, as production of the units is limited — and expect the price to really skyrocket if you’ve got your eye on one of the special torched edition, which was only available in pairs at the wallet-busting price of $469 per pair.

All things considered, however, we have only a few very minor complaints for a mod that looks and performs as well as the Wu Tang El Kapitan. There would surely be high expectations for any new mod Wu Tang produced after the Bagga, and we’d have to say that, as far as we’re concerned, Wu Tang nailed it with the El Kapitan. It’s another exceptional piece of work from a modder who’s shown he can not only build one very good mod, but keep a streak going. We can’t wait to see what Wu Tang House of Mods comes up with next.

About the Author

Trick Patrick (aka Trick) is an avid vaper who has traded an addiction to tobacco for an addiction to new vaping gear. When he’s not writing for Vape Squad, he can most often be found trying to translate the websites of foreign modders, prying the drip spouts out of new juice bottles, or stalking mail carriers.